Chicago settles with Bensenville church over cemetery

An American Airlines jet taxis adjacent to the cemetery in 2009, before those resting there were disinterred and relocated. (Chuck Berman, Tribune photo)

A lawsuit filed by the city of Chicago to acquire a small cemetery for the O'Hare International Airport expansion project — an action that sparked a five-year court battle and eventually resulted in almost 1,500 reburials — has been settled.

Earlier this month, the city agreed to pay St. John United Church of Christ in Bensenville $1.3 million for the 5-acre parcel on the west side of the airport, which included a 2-acre burial ground established by the church in 1849. The city said it needed the land for a new runway as part of the $8 billion O'Hare Modernization Program.

"The lawsuit is completely finished," Richard Friedman, an attorney with Neal & Leroy, said Thursday. The city hired the Chicago firm to pursue the eminent domain suit, which was filed in 2007 in DuPage County, to force the church to sell the land.

The city won control over the property in 2010 and began the process of removing the remains buried there. But the sides had been unable to agree on a dollar amount for the land's value, Friedman said, and the city and the church had been prepared as late as August to take the matter to trial.

However, DuPage County Judge Hollis Webster persuaded the parties to enter into settlement talks and helped negotiate the final agreement, Friedman said.

"She did an excellent job of getting the parties together," he said. "It was a good resolution — I think both sides were satisfied."

Attempts to reach the church and its attorneys were not successful.

All told, 1,494 bodies were disinterred from the St. Johannes Cemetery and reburied at various cemeteries throughout the region, Chicago Department of Aviation spokesperson Gregg Cunningham said Thursday. The final reburial took place last summer, he said.

The price tag for those services far exceeded the dollar value of the land. The city spent about $17 million on the reburial effort, Cunningham said, with about $11 million paid to The Louis Berger Group. That firm administered the relocation effort, including the completion of extensive genealogical reports used to identify and contact next of kin.

More than $5 million was spent on travel for family, memorial replacement and other costs associated with the relocations, Cunningham said.

The reburial had drawn criticism from some survivors, who said the loss of the German pioneer cemetery represented the forfeiture of a physical connection to their relatives and loved ones. But the Department of Aviation posted a number of supportive letters it received from next of kin on its website.

The Department of Aviation website also has a searchable list of the names of all those disinterred, including years of birth and death and the cemeteries where reburials took place.

Cunningham said the new airport runway is expected to be operational in October.